When it comes to social media influencers, there’s money to be made. Consumers today are met with hundreds, if not thousands, of posts from content creators daily designed to inspire purchases with affiliate brands – and it works, fueled off the connections and trust that influencers have earned with their followers.
After years of evolution the creator economy has become a key part of brands’ marketing plans, with companies seeing the potential to earn millions. Still, it isn’t as easy as getting a product into the hands of an influencer with a high follower count. Experts working in the space now know that winning creator brand partnerships are those that are authentic and innovative but finding those team-ups hasn’t exactly been formulaic – until now.
Founded in 2020, ShopMy has become the must-know platform in the content creation space for both influencers and brands. Created by a trio of technologists out of MIT and Harvard, Chris Tinsley, Harry Rein and Tiffany Lopinsky, ShopMy is the premium all-in-one creator-centric ecosystem that connects top brands and influential creators. Its mission is to bridge the gap between influencers and brands, eliminating barriers to collaboration while empowering its partners to take charge of their growth.
It’s an interesting model – one that not only streamlines talent discovery and campaign building for brands but also simplifies the monetization process and initiates new business relationships for creators. Through ShopMy, creators can participate in collaborations and initiate gifting requests from products selected by brands. This process ensures a more thoughtful gifting campaign, reaching only influencers who have an existing interest in the brand’s product, setting up more authentic posts and ultimately saving the brand the cost of sending product to uninterested parties. Across the platform, ShopMy’s tools have been designed to foster authenticity, understanding that creators want to collaborate with brands that they truly admire and brands seek creators who authentically love their products.
Notably, ShopMy’s current partners include 70,000 creators (with between 5,000 and 47 million followers) and over 48,000 brands including Anthropologie, J.Crew, Nike, Hill House Home, Net a Porter and AREA, among others, within the fashion, beauty, travel and home décor categories. On average, ShopMy brands see a $25,000 increase in monthly sales through the platform and achieve a 12X ROI.
The company said that the platform, which vets creators before onboarding, continues to see new applications for partnerships submitted daily.
Unlike other influencer or affiliate platforms, ShopMy is also designed to give its partners unparalleled transparency, Brands have access to creators’ performances from clicks and engagement for every product and brand they recommend. Similarly, creators can see which partnerships have resonated with their audience, earning them commissions.
The founders told Fairchild Studio that ensuring transparency for both parties was crucial to the initial build of the platform and will continue to be an important part of its model.
“Brands using ShopMy have achieved an impressive ROI due to the comprehensive insights we provide about their program,” said Lopinsky, co-founder and chief operating officer of ShopMy. Equipped with these analytics, brands and influencers can expand their partnerships through ongoing gifting, personalized promo codes, customized commission rates and paid campaigns.
Launched in July of this year, ShopMy’s latest feature, called Opportunities, is the company’s latest tool to streamline the process of relationship building between brands and creators. Designed to facilitate streamlined invitations from brand to creator, the tool allows brands to effortlessly invite creators to participate in events and campaigns, offering a blend of simplicity, scalability and efficiency. Content creators are given incentives for participating with the brands, receiving compensation in addition to commission.
For many brands, the feature is another way to amplify their program in tandem with the other ShopMy tools they are already using. Beyond event invitations, Opportunities ensures brands receive guaranteed creator coverage and performance metrics, leading to impactful, cost-effective content.
In the first two months, Opportunities helped ShopMy brands earn over $2.2 million and achieve five times ROI on average. Brands including COS and Amante 1530 have been among the first to use the tool to create meaningful, scalable live events. And behind the scenes, Opportunities was a part of several New York Fashion Week moments this September including AREA’s fashion show.
Lopinsky and Rein, cofounder and chief executive officer of ShopMy, said that Opportunities is the next step in ShopMy’s evolution from a digital connector to a holistic brand-creator-consumer ecosystem, seamlessly blending online influence with real-world impact. The tool, they explained, is a hybrid model that promises to give brands higher ROI and creators more stability in their earnings.
“Our goal is to cultivate a more stable creator industry,” said Rein. “With Opportunities, we’re building on the concept of creators as an extension of a brand’s dedicated sales team. These creators already have a deep understanding of the brand and engage in high-touch selling. By equipping them with additional tools—such as discount codes, increased commissions, and fixed fees — we can establish meaningful, long-term partnerships.”
As the ShopMy platform continues to grow and effectively change the content creator business, Lopinsky emphasized the importance of connecting brands and creators in a meaningful way, supported by transparent data that’s easy to track. When brands and creators genuinely resonate with each other, the result is more authentic content that consistently delivers results. This approach represents the future of the creator economy.